http://www.aquarionics.com/category/computing en-gb Aquarion (nicholas@aquarionics.com) Site Admin (nicholas@aquarionics.com) Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:09:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2008/07/12/Phonetic Today, I got an iPhone. This sounds deceptively simple, but really wasn’t, so here’s how it went. I had an 18 month contract with 02, ready to run out in September. But last month they phoned me up, and when I said I was waiting for the new iPhone, they recommended I switched to the Monthly Sim Only “Simplicity” contract, shaving three months off my contract (since... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2008/07/12/Phonetic Today, I got an iPhone. This sounds deceptively simple, but really wasn’t, so here’s how it went. I had an 18 month contract with 02, ready to run out in September. But last month they phoned me up, and when I said I was waiting for the new iPhone, they recommended I switched to the Monthly Sim Only “Simplicity” contract, shaving three months off my contract (since... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2008/05/04/Hate_Technology Thursday, 22:00: Accidentally buy an XBox 360 Decide it needs to talk to the network (before playing any games on it) Current Network: Desktop (“Tsunami”) & 360 plugged into Belkin Wireless Router, laptop and Wii talk to it remotely. Cable modem is upstream on Router. 360 cannot phone home due to closed ports. Open ports All ports not documented. Fuckit(1): 360 in... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2008/03/27/iTunes_Store_Links If you use a mac, and iTunes, you’ll know about the little arrow links on the currently playing track that take you to the iTunes store search for that artist/track. I’ve never used these, and I don’t like them. But now I know about this: defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES This makes all the little arrows search your internal library instead. So... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2008/03/18/Uh-oh http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2008/01/30/iPhone Being a mobile company, it’s vitally important we get to test the new and shiniest phones, which is why I will never buy a Motorola, don’t think the N95 is as shiny as many people appear to think, and how I got to borrow the Office iPhone for a while. The Office iPhone was bought when we launched last autumn and is a US model with the hack so we could use it in this country and... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2008/01/25/LoFi I am a qualified sysadmin. Whilst I currently am in a “I will never be on-call ever again” phase of my career (Very much like the “I will never drink again” phase of a hangover, with much the same future), the fear of people coming to your desk at 17:25 saying “The little lights have stopped flashing on my disk drive, and I’ve got a report for the board due,... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2008/01/25/LoFi I am a qualified sysadmin. Whilst I currently am in a “I will never be on-call ever again” phase of my career (Very much like the “I will never drink again” phase of a hangover, with much the same future), the fear of people coming to your desk at 17:25 saying “The little lights have stopped flashing on my disk drive, and I’ve got a report for the board due,... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2008/01/08/It%27s_not_for_you Chris Selland: But as a biz dev guy (who doesn’t have time – or a reason – to be online much) – and despite the fact that my job is all about relationships – I find twitter to be pretty pointless. LinkedIn, on the other hand, I use every single day. Oh. Good. I’ve been watching the Social Networking backlash with something of a professional... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2008/01/08/It%27s_not_for_you Chris Selland: But as a biz dev guy (who doesn’t have time – or a reason – to be online much) – and despite the fact that my job is all about relationships – I find twitter to be pretty pointless. LinkedIn, on the other hand, I use every single day. Oh. Good. I’ve been watching the Social Networking backlash with something of a professional... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2008/01/07/Pandora_closes_the_box I just got an email from pandora It says: As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2007/12/25/Import_ant I have had it with Windows Mobile Devices. My main phone has been a HTC Wizard, sold by O2 as the XDA Mini. I bought it because it has a nice screen, a built-in keyboard, and will run PuTTY, which is handy when I’m pretending to be a sysadmin. It’s useful, in that it’s a pretty good Internet Device – though one of the new Nokia tablets would be better – but it... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2007/12/25/Import_ant I have had it with Windows Mobile Devices. My main phone has been a HTC Wizard, sold by O2 as the XDA Mini. I bought it because it has a nice screen, a built-in keyboard, and will run PuTTY, which is handy when I’m pretending to be a sysadmin. It’s useful, in that it’s a pretty good Internet Device – though one of the new Nokia tablets would be better – but it... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2007/12/17/Web_Development_Three_Point_Question_Mark Half of the Web Development community appears to have managed to go screaming round the twist. First (In order of “Things Aquarion saw”) was Opera’s decision to file proceedings with the European Union for Microsoft’s failure to adhere to web standards. I’ve got more to say on this, but I’ll do so later. Second, we have Malarkey’s call to disband the... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2007/12/13/Opera_files_a_complaint_against_Microsoft Håkon Wium Lie: Today we have taken a stand. Opera has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission to force Microsoft to support open Web standards in its Web browser, Internet Explorer. We believe that Microsoft has harmed Web standards by refusing to support them; Microsoft often participates in creating Web standards, promoting them, and even promising to implement them.... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2007/11/20/IANAG 61 http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2007/10/17/Native_Apps_on_the_iPhone_%5Band%5D_iPod_Touch We have always been at war with Eurasia http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2007/09/01/Vizzinibugs%2C_Heisenbugs_and_the_vanishing_birthday Heisenbugs are bugs that vanish when you turn debugging on. Schrodinbugs are bugs that don’t manifest until you read the code and realize they could never possibly have worked, whereupon they don’t. These are impossible, yet happen despite this. Vizzinibugs are the single most common type of user interface bug. They are when the user follows an action path inconceivable to the... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2007/09/01/Vizzinibugs%2C_Heisenbugs_and_the_vanishing_birthday Heisenbugs are bugs that vanish when you turn debugging on. Schrodinbugs are bugs that don’t manifest until you read the code and realize they could never possibly have worked, whereupon they don’t. These are impossible, yet happen despite this. Vizzinibugs are the single most common type of user interface bug. They are when the user follows an action path inconceivable to the... http://www.aquarionics.com/journal/2007/08/24/Snippit a=0;for fle in *; do b=`for c in $(seq 0 $a); do echo -n " "; done`; mv "$fle" "$b"; a=$(($a+1)); done